


Don't Call the Cops, I'm Already Dead

by Linara



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-01
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 21:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linara/pseuds/Linara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times John Watson met Sebastian Moran, and one time he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Call the Cops, I'm Already Dead

**Author's Note:**

> This began as a fill for a prompt somewhere, several months ago. Since then I've forgotten the prompt and changed things around a good bit, so it's not really related to anything.
> 
> Unbeta'd, unfortunately. Feel free to point out an error.

The first time John Watson saw Sebastian Moran was in an army hospital in Afghanistan. Half of the bones in his foot had been crushed, and although John forgot how it happened, he hasn't forgotten the way Moran had stared up at the ceiling of the tent during the resetting. No anaesthetic, refused to bite down on something. If it weren't for tendons that pressed against the skin of his neck as though begging to escape, John might've thought him one of those that had gone past any limit of pain endurance, had crossed that threshold and now felt nothing.

John remembers asking what Moran did, trying to distract him, and the response stands out in his head in sharp relief, vivid blood red letters against a white screen. "I kill people."

It had been a relief when he was done, when the bones were back in place and Moran was being carried away. There was something in his eyes that made John think he liked killing people. Liked hurting them.

~

The second time John saw Moran was in the papers, a few weeks after he moved into Baker Street. 

"War hero welcomed in Sussex," it read, and there was something about being shot in the knee - the part of John that would always be a doctor thought that Moran might have a limp similar to his own. John was a bit more focused on the picture of Moran, though, the one of him in front of the Vet's Center. He looked quite blank and cold, exactly how John had seen him before. 

John shivered, folded the paper, and wished fervently that Moran got a better therapist than Thompson. He would need it.

~

The third time John saw Moran was at the pool "where little Carl died", holding the sniper rifle with its sights on himself. He felt stupid for not expecting it - of course the psychopaths would join forces, and wasn't it John's luck that he knew exactly how demented one of them was? Strapped into Semtex and wishing he could collapse, but he couldn't, he had to stay alert, had to be ready to take advantage of Moriarty as he monologued. 

When he did get his arms around Moriarty's throat, he hadn't been surprised to see Moran shift to Sherlock, although the multiple dots did baffle him. Laser sights, he realized later. Can't expect the mad men to play fair, can you?

Even stranger than the dots, however, was the way Moran looked at Moriarty, quite...not angry, but something strong. Something almost wrathful. It unsettled John as much as Moran did when he was blank-faced. For the briefest of seconds, John had almost pitied the consulting criminal that he held in front of him.

~

The fourth time John Watson saw Sebastian Moran was in an abandoned warehouse near the Eastside Docks. Sherlock was lying prone on the floor in front of him, and Moran was taking the opportunity to kick the hell out of John's flatmate, while John watched in horror from where he was propped against a crate, hands and ankles bound. Moriarty stood next him, dressed impeccably and watching the proceedings with what seemed to be a touch of unease.

As Moran prepared to deliver a particularly vicious blow to Sherlock's head, Moriarty stepped away from John and held up a hand.

"That's enough."

Moran looked at him in disbelief.

"He's not dead yet!"

"I don't want him dead!" 

Moriarty's voice began to rise rapidly, and John gazed in disbelief as the two men - the two murdering psychopaths - proceeded to have what he might've called a lover's spat, if he didn't know better. Had there been plates on hand, John felt sure they would be hurling them at one another with great abandon.

It ended when Moran shoved Moriarty against a stack of crates, pushing against him with his whole body. The tension in the air was suffocatingly thick. 

John wasn't quite surprised when they kissed, attacking each other savagely, teeth and everything and John turned his head, looked back to Sherlock. He hadn't moved yet. 

~

The fifth, and last time John Watson saw Moran was in the papers, again. The headline read 'Veteran Found Dead In River'.

Sherlock, confined to the flat until his broken arm healed, looked slightly pleased.

"Unsurprising," he'd commented, turning away from the paper. "He was a dead man after that display in the warehouse."

John, reminded of those dead eyes in the field hospital, wondered why Sherlock, the brilliant Sherlock Holmes, hadn't noticed that Sebastian Moran had never been alive to begin with.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments feed the muse.


End file.
